How to recursivly find the height of a Trie Tree - c++

Question

I'm having a little trouble figuring out how to find the height of a trie tree data structure. I know for an AVL tree a simple recursive height function would be:
height(nodeType *node) const
{
if(node == NULL)
return 0;
// if tree is not empty height is 1 + max of either path
return 1 + std::max(height(node->left), height(node->right));
}
but now my trie tree has a children with 26 different indexes, there must be a simple way to find the maximum height without typing out all 26 different possible indexes. How could I go about this?
int height(trieNodeType *node) const
{
if(node == NULL)
return 0;
for(int i = 0; i < 26; i ++) {
//has to be something to do with a for loop,
//i know that much
}
}

Answer 1

Looping is the way to go.
C++11:
if (node == nullptr) return 0;
auto i = std::begin(node->children);
auto end = std::end(node->children);
auto max_height = height(i++);
while (i != end) {
max_height = std::max(max_height, height(i++));
}
return 1 + max_height;
C++ <11.
if (node == NULL) return 0;
trieNodeType ** i = node->children;
trieNodeType ** end = i + (sizeof(node->children) / sizeof(trieNodeType *));
int max_height = height(i++);
while (i != end) {
max_height = std::max(max_height, height(i++));
}
return 1 + max_height;

Answer 2

Another C++11 approach
return 1 + std::accumulate(std::begin(node->children) + 1, std::end(node->children),
height(node->children[0]),
[](int curMax, trieNodeType* child) { return std::max(curMax, height(child)); });
There exists also std::max_element function, but in straightforward implementation using it would lead to calculating the height of the same child node several times.